ITE parking generation rates complaints

The consensus that I have heard resoundingly from cyburbanites is that the ITE Parking Generation numbers are hogwash and need thrown out. That being said, has anyone come up with a better rationalle, and gone as far as creating a guide to set numbers for parking requirements??? I would like to see numbers per 100 s.f. for several types of building uses. Any spreadsheets or links would be great info. I would like to see how far off the ITE guide is.

Enforcing parking requirements is wasteful to begin with. People can provide parking as they need it. Forcing them to provide it for themselves creates a situation where those who don't need parking are forced to bear the costs of parking, and those who do need parking provide as much or more parking than required anyway.

jaws, that's a tough habit for some planners to break. My suggestions of abandoning parking requirements and adopting parking maximums was met with a "no way in hell" response until out-of-town consultants suggested the same.

we still have a parking schedule for required minimums.. hopefully, within 2 years, this will all change as we adopt form-based code.

Enforcing parking requirements is wasteful to begin with. People can provide parking as they need it. Forcing them to provide it for themselves creates a situation where those who don't need parking are forced to bear the costs of parking, and those who do need parking provide as much or more parking than required anyway.

I agree. Why not let the developer decide the right amount of parking? After all, the developer will be deciding the site plan at the same time he is negotiating with tenants. Either the developer has the right experience to determine the correct amount of parking, or the tenants will let him know what the correct amount of parking is.

The developer's interest is aligned with providing sufficient parking.

I used to work for a shopping center developer. We decided parking ratios depending on the nature of the location. Throughout most of the US, the ratio was 6 spaces per 1,000 sf of leasable area. In a Las Vegas development, it was 2.5 spaces. In Japan, it was 10 spaces. In Mexico City, 5 was enough. When parking was insufficient, we built a parking deck.

The parking numbers local planners provided were nonsense, so we persuaded them we were right and if we weren't we'd simply build more parking.

One of the local cities has a 1/250 (4 per 1000sf) code requirement for retail uses. However, they also require more landscaping for any site providing more than 10% greater than the minimums. It's a cheap way to have something of a cap.
The consistent problem is that the city folks are much more likely to get a complaint from a homeowner with some retail traffic parking in front of the house, than from the same homeowner complaining of a few parking spaces on the retail lot that are never used. Thus encouragement to overestimate and require more parking on site.

Is there another resource, similar to the ITE bible, but perhaps more useful and accurate but still professionally acceptable?

Originally posted by ssnyderjr

The consensus that I have heard resoundingly from cyburbanites is that the ITE Parking Generation numbers are hogwash and need thrown out. That being said, has anyone come up with a better rationalle, and gone as far as creating a guide to set numbers for parking requirements??? I would like to see numbers per 100 s.f. for several types of building uses. Any spreadsheets or links would be great info. I would like to see how far off the ITE guide is.

ULI has a shared parking study, a new version is supposed to be out any day now (has slipped several times, potentially to as late as the 13th or 14th month of 2005). Several cities around here prefer it to the shared parking model in the ITE Parking Generation. But you may not like it since it usually shows more parking demand than the ITE manual. I can't stess enough the need to collect local data, it's your only option if you don't trust the manuals and want some defendable data.

ULI has a shared parking study, a new version is supposed to be out any day now (has slipped several times, potentially to as late as the 13th or 14th month of 2005). Several cities around here prefer it to the shared parking model in the ITE Parking Generation. But you may not like it since it usually shows more parking demand than the ITE manual. I can't stess enough the need to collect local data, it's your only option if you don't trust the manuals and want some defendable data.

Local data sounds like good advice. Has anyone looked at the feasibility of Alexander & Co.'s 7% parking in "A Pattern Language"? I'm guessing that would be way less than most American cities.

I totally agree. Recently I inquired about communities that may have parking maximum requirements and many referred me to ITE. But what we have decided is that if a well-known retailer or conglomerant (sp?) comes in town, they will know how much parking they will need. Let them propose the number of spaces. And speaking of micromanaging parking, you should see some of the uses listed in our Zoning Ordinance ( i.e., sanitorium, nunnery, photostatting, philatelic shops, taxidermist, haberdasheries, hearing aid store).

Points taken

You all have expressed valid points, however, we have a pair of situations where we have developers proposing garages on city lots and we have debate as to how many still remain "public" apart from their "private" (typically) residential spaces they want to reserve for tenants, etc. We would like to increase our public spaces to accomodate future growth since a garage would limit your parking on that lot forever (in theory). We have already set precident by "leasing" private spaces for adjacent residential developments at rediculously low rates (like $30/space/month) and at that rate we would be able to replace that surface space with a space in garage in like 40 years (roughly $12-15k/space). Not a good practice in my opinion, but I didn't get to have much input on those discussions. I think we opened the floodgates.